TIP: Use a Media Compressor to Get Below the 20MB Limit in Posts

Forum Help
#1

Hey y’all!

Totally a conincidence that my anniversary is 8/11 and this topic got posted on 8/11 at 8:11 PM…

You may all be aware of the 20MB media size limit for the Forum. To see the video/image embedded inside the post, it needs to be <20MB.

image
image775×159 6.51 KB

It tells you to try using cloud storage and give a link to it, but here’s why you shouldn’t:

The Hassle of Linked Media

Say you’re in the support categories to help someone out, and they have their video linked to Imgur, Gyazo, Google Drive, etc. Most of the time, it’s because of the pesky 20MB limit. But whatever the case, it’s really annoying to click a link to see a video/image especially when trying to see what the issue is. By the time you switch tabs back to the Forum, you forget what even happened in the video, then you have to switch tabs and rewatch—AHH it’s annoying. Plus, most times you have to connect the words on the post and the action in the video to see what and why it’s happening, more tab-switching is needed! And the situation is 10x worse on the phone.

Another issue with 20MB+ media is unneeded quality. Do you really need Ultra HD resolution for a scripting support video? Even a platform feedback video doesn’t need such quality, and the bad thing is, uploading to cloud storage services doesn’t always preserve all that quality, defeating your upload partially (still 20MB+) or entirely (<20MB).

So, we can all agree that having a video/image inside of the post itself is a million times more convenient. Now you may be saying:

“What about all the flickering of a video when you edit your post?”

Well, it’s inevitble—if the video stays there. What I mean is, you can temporarily break the formatting to not make it load so you don’t have to deal with the annoying refresh like so:

image
Just delete the exclamation point, and put it back in after you finish editing.

Compression Websites

I know many of my posts still Google Drive links, but recently, my newer posts have been using some media compression to squeeze them just under the 20MB limit.

Here are the ones I use, but you may use any:

Image Compressor (FreeConvert)

Video Compressor (FreeConvert)

How to Use Them

They’re quite simple to use, I’ll show an example with video compression, and since it’s the same website, it’ll be similar for image compression.

Compression
Compression1131×544 57.5 KB

Just do some estimation to get your video just below 20MB. I usually shrink by friendly numbers.

Closure

I do think that this is quite a new idea as many people just don’t use it, but I want to evaluate myself, so here’s a poll:

Rate this tip. How helpful was this to you?

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0 voters

Thanks y’all,
And have a great Mountain Day! :mount_fuji:

and my anniversary

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#2

Great topic! I’d like to add my two cents no the topic, since I’ve also had to go through the media compressor process.

One more reason you won’t want to use Google Drive or Youtube is for the anonymity. You’ll need to create a second email just to hide your personal details. Since neither of the aforementioned options allow anonymous links, forum videos are a good option.

Second, it’s really easy to download. No need to go to an external site.

Third, this is a really good video compressor that doesn’t reduce quality:

As it just gets rid of things like subtitles, which take up unnecessary space. This is especially true for the .mp4 format, which I recommend you all to use.

An .mp4 converter below:

Lastly, happy anniversary! Have a great day, @TheCarbyneUniverse.

1 Like